


The Bomb Does Not Kill

by facetofcathy



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Character Study, Community: sga_flashfic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-05
Updated: 2009-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney's fantasy life.</p><p><em>Rodney closed his eyes, but the code still swam across his vision, bright white symbols burned onto a black ground, and he didn't know why closing his eyes helped him ignore the moron. It was irrational, and he was anything but that. The clatter of his keyboard stilled as he raised his right hand and his fist formed. He knew what it felt like to drive his fist into flesh, to pound until the flesh yielded.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bomb Does Not Kill

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://sga-flashfic.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sga_flashfic**](http://sga-flashfic.dreamwidth.org/) Coping Mechanism Challenge.

The bomb has no soul. Rodney could, would if there was any point, debate the existence of his own or anyone else's, but the point was that the bomb was not responsible, the bomb has no morality. The bomb does not kill. Had not killed. Will not.

His fingers moved over the keys, splayed awkwardly, a remnant of his precocious development and a time when the tools had all been too big to use. He was watching the screen and the blur of letters and numbers, and he would have to look at this somewhere else, alone, where it was quiet because that voice was droning on right in front of him again. He always insisted, as stridently as he needed to, that his lab bench be placed to put his back to the wall; you could more safely turn your back on a Wraith than you could colleagues.

He might be a barely competent engineer, whatever his name was, but the voice was a grinding scrape of annoyance. The moron was going back on the first ship that passed, Wraith preferably. Rodney closed his eyes, but the code still swam across his vision, bright white symbols burned onto a black ground, and he didn't know why closing his eyes helped him ignore the moron. It was irrational, and he was anything but that. The clatter of his keyboard stilled as he raised his right hand and his fist formed. He knew what it felt like to drive his fist into flesh, to pound until the flesh yielded.

John had handed him a gun; god, that was five years ago now—more—closer to six, and he'd held it awkwardly and hated the thing, but John had insisted, and John never did that stridently, but he got his way all the same. Rodney had been terrible with the thing, uncomfortable, inept even, and frustrated with his failure. John had told him to keep practising, before he'd wandered off looking a little bored.

It was Jeannie, or rather her coddled husband, who'd given him the key to unlock his frustration. His first real visit at their house, and Kaleb had blithered on about the gun registry and talked a lot of nonsense about the culpability of the gun manufacturers, and Rodney had blown up at him and asked him to explain the difference between dropping a bomb or shooting someone or beating them to a bloody pulp and then snapping their neck. He hadn't told Kaleb that he'd seen all three of those things done, done two of them, had never had to do the third only because he was surrounded by specialists who could do it for him. He didn't ask Ronon to code the delay on the bomb, and Ronon didn't ask him to beat the guard bloody, they had a system, a symbiosis. It worked.

Rodney had gone back, gone home, after that visit and told John he'd wanted to start the weapons training over. "I know what they are now," he'd said, and John had looked at him like he was crazy, but they had started from scratch as if Rodney was a beginner, and he'd understood that the gun was a tool, like a fist, like a bomb, and the training had gone much better.

The voice shattered his musings, cracking his calm, and Rodney pounded his fist into the flesh of his own thigh, but it was a spray of blood and a crack of bone that he saw, that he heard, and he could feel his heart rate ratchet up, adrenaline at work. He did it again. Saw the snap of the head as the force of the impact was transferred. The clench in his gut eased, and the simple, beautiful forces and vectors and relationships, actions, reactions—he should try this instead of meditation—spun in his brain. Calculate the force of a fist to the head of an annoying scientist. What would it take to send the nasal bone plunging into the brain? What angle and force was necessary to snap the spine?

John had been impressed with Rodney's new found affinity for the gun. They'd meet in the firing range and waste round after round, the smoke and the tang of combustion thick in the air. His aim had improved, and he did not flinch at the sound; the gun was a bomb, and the bomb did not kill. John would stand behind him, tap his arm or his shoulder or his hip to remind him to pay attention to his stance. It was his remaining weakness. He understood celestial bodies, objects in motion, ships in space, where they were and how they moved, but he would never just know where his own body was. It did things against his will, so he had to be reminded, and he had not objected to the touch. He, perhaps, had liked it as much as he'd basked in the approval that he could occasionally earn with a good spread pattern on the target. He'd practiced with his sidearm, breaking it down and cleaning it, until it had become as familiar in his hand and his tablet—just a tool he could use.

He forced his mind back to the task at hand. He would finish the code. He could ignore the distractions, the lab full of people, the radio and the voices from the control room. He focused on the screen, and his fingers moved as he willed them, and the code took shape.

He understood that his own body was a tool, but learning to use it as well as the gun had eluded him. He studied, he did, he worked under Teyla's infinite patience and Ronon's boundless but heat-less exasperation, and neither of them ever stopped trying, but he could not summon the action to match his will. He tried to explain to Teyla the theory about learning the physics of the body when young—children catching balls in sunny, grassy yards, running and jumping and climbing—and that the adult brain could not be trained the same way. He could of course, who better in fact, understand and describe and quantify the forces and the vectors and the motion, but he _could not_ do it. His brain could not make it real—could not exert its will on the physical world.

Rodney had them, though, the three of them, his team, and he'd once come up with some maudlin theory about molecular attraction and how it could be applied to the four of them, but he'd erased that file, at least he thought he did, he should check, but they could be the bodies in motion. He could exert his will on the abstract, and that was enough.

That voice again, grating and annoying and flaying at his nerves. Rodney stilled his fingers; he was nearly done coding the control program, the one that would delay the bomb, the second bomb, the one that Lorne would drop from the jumper. He had time, lots of time, and it would be perfect, and he could indulge, and he closed his eyes again, and he watched his fist connect perfectly. He saw the spray of blood and the crack of bone and the snap of the neck, and the guy was toppling, gravity had him now, and he wasn't talking anymore. Rodney smiled.

"Look at McKay," the voice said. "He looks happy doesn't he? He knows he would have never come back from this mission, not him. If the other three make it out alive after fighting their way in and planting that bomb of his, I'll be shocked. I heard that—"

The lights blurred and danced as he opened his eyes and tried to focus. He heard the clatter of his lab stool falling, but he was still seeing red, red blood, and he had the guy, not gravity, he did, right up against the wall. "What's your name?" Rodney said.

The guy rolled his eyes, and yes likely they'd already been introduced, more than once. "Dr. Sorren," he said, drawing the name out with casual insolence, and looking at Rodney's hand on his shoulder, and then back up again.

"Sorren," Rodney said, and he felt his fist forming, but he kept his eyes open this time, and he still felt the impact, heard the crunch, saw the spray of blood. "The bomb doesn't kill, Sorren, try to remember that."

Radek was at his elbow, pushing him and prodding him and leading him back to his bench, and he hadn't actually, had he? He glanced at his fist, still tightly clenched, checking for blood.

"Next ship, Rodney, I know," Radek said. "Now let us look at this code, it must be perfect, yes?"

"It will be," Rodney said. "I'll make sure it's perfect."


End file.
